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In today’s article we are going to cover an affiliate marketing how to guide. The reason is, there is all kinds of advice out there, some good, some bad. So we want to drive home a few points for someone who is new to internet marketing.
Sure, some advice you see out there will tell you to do this and you’ll make money fast. But that’s not always the case. The real truth is affiliate marketing is a business and it takes time to see some success.
While it is true some have seen huge amounts of success in a short amount of time, the vast majority have not.
Stop Looking For The New Secret
One of the biggest reasons why many people fail at affiliate marketing is they are always looking for something new. People always think there is some secret out there that if they just find it they will be rich.
The truth is, you have to stop all that nonsense and just get to work. Sure, there are some things out there that will bring new traffic and or sales. But if you don’t have the core things it place, you are building a glass house.
Can you make it in affiliate marketing without a website? Yes, it has been done. However, you are not building a foundation for your affiliate marketing business.
If you have been reading affiliate marketing how to guides for years, then you most likely already have a pretty good idea of what it takes to succeed. You just have to start doing it.
We suggest, you unsubscribe from lists you don’t read and clear some of the clutter from your inbox and then start working.
Building a Foundation
When you stop looking for the affiliate marketing secret, then it’s time to start building a foundation for success.
The key things we say you will need are a website, autoresponder, content, a willingness to learn and just get to work.
First pick a topic you like or are good at. You need to do this from the start because you won’t want to lose interest in your business. So make sure you pick something you have a passion for.
Once you have your topic, then create your website. We recommend you start with WordPress.
Your website will be just the foundation you need to have success. You will be able to get traffic from search engines such as Google and Yahoo, use pay per click and build an email list.
And once your website is up and running, you will always have this as your framework for success.
Later on, you can always build more websites to add other income streams.
It Takes Work
Don’t be fooled by what you read. Affiliate marketing takes work, dedication and determination. You will need to do keyword research and write many articles before having success.
But, just imagine you have been writing everyday for for year or so and your are finally getting traffic. Once, you get to this point it’s unbelievable but it does happen with a good amount of hard work.
We have marketed and built many sites for people and some it has taken a few years to see success for various reasons. But it can and does happen.
Content Is Your Friend
Many people we help cannot get their head wrapped around the content idea. They usually do not understand why they will need so much content.
The first reason is, you want to keep your blog fresh for your visitors to come back to. Also, think of it like a lottery, you have a way better chance at winning with more tickets. Well, a website is the same way. The more keyword driven articles you have the more chances you have at being found.
Find The Keywords
Keywords will be the driving force behind your articles. While you will not always need to make every single article keyword driven, in the beginning you will. This is how you will get traffic to your blog.
And, you will need to pick lower competition words at first, so you have a chance at showing up on 1st page of a search engine. Just go to Google and search for keyword tools. You may need to sign up for a few free trials as not every keyword tool is for everyone.
You can also use the Google Keyword Planner. However when starting you will need a little training to use it properly.
Keyword research takes work and creativity. Also, you have to understand there is a buying cycle on the internet and longer tail keywords are usually at the end of this cycle. So do not make the mistake of going after high competition level keywords at first.
It is way better to have lower traffic keywords and make up on volume then it is to get no traffic. It’s easy to figure out. If you have 200 articles and each one just gets 10 visitors a month, that’s 2000 visitors a month from search engines.
It’s usually much more than this because sometimes a keyword will be found for more broad terms. But, use this as your starting point. yes, keywords are that important.
Conversions, Optimization & Monetization
Once your site is on place and you are creating content on a regular basis, you will need to think about conversions, optimization and how you will make money from your site (monetizing).
You will need a plan here which will include what affiliate programs you will be promoting and how you will promote them.
While it is not a bad idea to include affiliate links on your site, a good strategy that works is collecting names for an email list. This is why you will need to learn copy-writing and selling via email.
The single biggest mistake webmasters make with email marketing is, their whole site is full of great content but they do nothing but promote in email.
You need to offer awesome and helpful content in email also and then sell. You also need to provide good stories.
